We use cookies in order to provide you with the best possible user experience on our websites. By continuing to use our sites and services, you are giving consent to cookies being used. You can find more information in our data privacy statement.

State of Workplace Training in Contact Centers

While it may seem like an obvious choice for
management—provide the right training
for your employees so they will do the right
things to drive company success— this isn’t the case for most organizations.

For the second year in a row, Ipsos, a global
market research firm, conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adult
employees across a variety of industries. The result? One third of all employees surveyed
receive no formal job training and 38% of contact center employees receiving only
classroom training.

Despite the recent advances and innovations in
the training industry (not to mention the scientific research proving that
long, traditional classroom-style training is ineffective), the state of
workplace training has not changed much over the past few years.

To be frank, it is alarming to see how many
companies are failing to implement new approaches to learning as a part of
their overall culture—especially when 57% of employees recognize the value
of formal workplace training and 88% of contact center employees feel it
positively impacts their job engagement. When frontline
employees and agents aren’t provided the right training they need to effectively
perform their jobs, they become disengaged. Unsurprisingly, performance,
productivity, and customer satisfaction can suffer as a result.

For training to be effective, it needs to be
fun, easy, and fit naturally into employees’ daily workflow. It must also be
delivered in focused bites and map to how the brain works to ensure that
employees remember the information they learn. The Ipsos research supports
this, with more than two-thirds (73%) of contact centre employees stating the
importance of short training sessions and 86% wanting regular, frequent
training so they won’t forget.

How to improve your contact center
training

One of the best places to start is with the frontline
employee.

Some questions you may need to ask include:

How do your employees feel about training?

What sort of things are important to them?

What could leadership do to increase their engagement and make the learning experience more impactful?

Fortunately, Ipsos has done the heavy lifting
for you. Their study reveals the importance of effective corporate training and
how, when employees are engaged in training, it can drive real business
results.

The training frontline employees want

The results are clear: workplace engagement has increased in
importance to employees in all industries—including contact centers. Not only
have specific training elements related to engagement increased in importance
year over year, they have also become more important to employees. In other
words, employees want to be engaged in training that reflects their needs. But
what are those needs?

As the chart above illustrates, contact center
employees placed the highest emphasis on being paid to complete training. They
also want training that is easy to understand, can be done when it’s convenient
to them, makes knowledge available in the moment of need, and can be applied on
the job.

In today’s work environment, it’s absolutely critical
for an organization to enable agents to develop the unique skills and knowledge
each one needs to excel at their particular job. The reality is that the majority
of companies are falling short of delivering the training that accomplished
this. That’s because one-size-fits-all programs just can’t meet these varied
requirements.

In order to be effective, learning must continuously
build and reinforce the right knowledge for each employee based on what they
know (and don’t know) to develop the right behaviors. When learning is done
this way, it drives measurable business results that positively impact the
bottom line.

If you want to empower employees to contribute
to the overall success of your organization, I encourage you to think about
what you’re doing to deliver the type of training agents want—and need.